Parking at Schools in the Neighborhood

1 parent question ▼
Archived Q&A and reviews ▼

Parent Q&A

Select any title to view the full question and replies.

  • Parking issue living near a school.

    –
    Jan 18, 2017

    Hi all.  My partner and I have reached our wit's end with the rudeness of people constantly blocking our driveway.  We live across the street from a middle school in Berkeley and just today for example, we had 3 different cars throughout the day that hung over and blocked our driveway.  Yesterday, after living here for 9 years, we for the first time had to tow a car because it made it impossible for me to get out to get to an appointment.  To people parking on the street, it doesn't look like they're blocking our driveway that badly, but our driveway is at a really odd angle to the street and when they hang over into it, it makes is incredibly difficult to back out.  We have to drive through ours or our neighbor's yards in order to get in and out if it's blocked.  We both work from home and come and go quite often throughout the day and despite putting up "No Parking" signs, having our curb painted red, emailing the principal of the school and having several people ticketed, nothing seems to work.  The scariest was when my partner was 5 days past her due date and somebody completely blocked the driveway for a couple of hours on a weekend so the police were slow to respond.  (I now have BPD in my speed dial on my phone, something I never dreamed would be the case!) 

    I've noticed as I've driven through both Albany and El Cerrito, both towns have gone through the trouble of painting parking spaces onto the street that are adjacent to their schools in order to help remedy this issue.  Does anybody have any other suggestions on how to deal with this?  Other people in our neighborhood have painted parking spaces themselves, but from what I understand that is technically graffiti or vandalism.  Or does anybody have any suggestions on how to work on getting the city of Berkeley to paint parking spots on the streets directly connected to schools where this is a problem?  At this point we're so frustrated that we're considering buying another vehicle just to park it in such a way that nobody else can park there.    

    Thanks.       

    Jan 18, 2017

    Hi, I have a somewhat similar issue but on a smaller scale. I live across the street from a daycare/preschool and am constantly dealing with that issue. I also have a pretty narrow driveway that makes it difficult to pull in/out if people are right up against it. I haven't had to tow or ticket people yet but I have had confrontations and had to speak directly with the owners of the school (who I must admit do make a point to remind their parents constantly about the parking issue). Have you considered purchasing a somewhat large planter box and putting it on the to keep people from parking a reasonable distance from your driveway? I'm sure there are permit issues with the City of Berkeley but that might be a cheaper/environmentally pleasing way to solve the issue.

    Jan 25, 2017

    I don't know of anyone would respect a cone, but you cold put a cone or a large cement planter on the street.

    Jan 25, 2017

    I've found physical obstacles help.

    - get some big safety cones and put them in the area you don't want cars.

    - leave your trash can in front of the curb cut

    (I lived across from a church for ten years and also dealt with being blocked in and having to tow people so that I could get to work). 

    I used to leave laminated notes as well (you are blocking my driveway, please don't do it I. The future) but I don't think it was effective. 

    Jan 25, 2017

    I don’t know if any of this would help but I would do three things: 1. Buy orange traffic cones and place them in front of the red zone on each side of your driveway. 2. Contact the Berkeley School Board since the principal has not been of any help (I would see if other neighbors feel the same, multiple comments from the same neighborhood might get their attention). 3. Call Berkeley’s parking control and ask them to ticket in your neighborhood during pick up and drop off times for a week non-stop then periodically after that. Sometimes a week of frequent tickets can really improve the behavior of rude drivers. I believe the school has a responsibility to lessen the impact on neighbors but they so rarely do. Schools should be reminding parents that they are not to block driveways and they should have some pick-up and drop-off system so that people do not need to get out of their cars to pick up their children. Good luck!

    Jan 26, 2017

    Could you park on the street yourself? And if/when it's available, park in the spot nearest your driveway (even blocking your own driveway)? If it were me in your situation, I'd like to think I'd just try to find a practical solution like this to make sure I could move my car, and not focus so much on my frustrations with other people that I can't control. I understand that it's probably really frustrating, particularly when it's really egregious, but it sounds like sometimes it's not egregious it's just an honest mistake. As a parent who wishes I lived right across the street from a school, and wishes I worked from home so that I didn't have to frantically run around to drop off my kids at various schools on the way to my hellish Bay Area commute, I am guessing that other parents in my situation appreciate your patience with us!

    Jan 27, 2017

Archived Q&A and Reviews

Questions

Parking and traffic problems with neighbor's home daycare

Sept 2006

Hi Everyone,

I need advice regarding problems encountered with a family child care facility run out of my neighbor's home. While I do not know anything about the quality of the facility and how they treat their children, the amount of vehicular traffic and lack of parking near my home has become a huge nuisance.

Here's a list of the problems this day care is causing: people double parking on the street in front of the house to pick/drop off kids; clients blasting their music as if our residential street was a concert hall; excess vehicles owned by the child care parked for days on end in front of our properties and rarely used; and most recently, employees who leave their cars in front of my house throughout the weekend.

I am getting really annoyed at all of the above situations because we live on a residential street, that has very limited parking, basically, each home has one street parking space. However, these people who run the day care neither control the traffic arriving to their business, nor care about the fact that they are inconviencing their neighbors.

One of the employees has been leaving their car parked in front of my house through the weekend, and even had the nerve to have a mechanic come work on it in the street for two weekends in a row! I left a reasonible note on her car asking her to at least pull all the way forward if she was to park there. She flew off the handle at me, and immediately became belligerent and antagonistic at me. She acted like it was her god given right to do as she pleases.

I'm fed up!

I have not approached the owner of the Day Care facility yet, because in the 2 years that I have lived here, she has never once seemed like an approachable person.

If and when I approach her and discuss this topic with her, and she is unreasonable about any of the problems, do I have ANY legal measures available? Does any know the City of Oakland codes regarding traffic and belligerent day care employees?

Where do I find information to make living on my street more bearable?

Any info would be much appreciated.

Put up a warning sign. Then start having them all towed if they linger. After a while people will be afraid to park in front of your house. Don't know that there is much you can do about the temporary parking and noise, though. The OPD needs to be able to witness the offense first hand to issue a ticket -Mean but works

Good lord. Get over yourself. You are upset because people park on the street in front of your house? Too bad! Thats what the street is for! You act like they are parking on your front lawn

I would suggest a couple of things: First, ask them to limit their parking. Tell them you'll call and have double parkers ticketed and towed. Check if the day care has a business license (underhanded but could ultimately work). Oakland PD also has what's called ''community police'' or something like that. Check the Oakland PD website, somewhere within Oakland.net I had gone down to the main PD downtown to deal with a different kind of problem neighbor, and the person at the front desk was more than happy to help and gave me the whole list. That way you can start working on solutions. Good luck

I would start by contacting Community Care Licensing (CCLD) to find out if she is a licensed daycare. Also find out what her capacity is. If she isn't licensed or is exceeding her capacity, file a complaint. CCLD is obligated to investigate within a few days of receiving a complaint. The traffic and double parking is not safe when there are so many little kids involved. I would let her know that you are concerned about accidents and that you'll report double parking incidents to the OPD. In most cities, there is a time limit on street parking in order to prevent abandoned vehicles - 24 or 48 hours maybe? Look up the regulations and let her know that you are planning to report vehicles that have exceeded the limit. Also check into the noise ordinance in Oakland - how early it's happening, how loud it is, where it's coming from.